


Norwegian Horror Story

by grayspider1974



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Other, Suomi shamanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2019-01-15 18:51:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12326808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayspider1974/pseuds/grayspider1974
Summary: To Tuonla we go, to the Dead Lands we travel...words shall not be hid, though the speakers perish!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This deals with Suomi shamanic traditions that really have more in common with Shintoism or with Native American beliefs than with modern neo-pagan beliefs like Wicca or Asatru. In fact, the similarity between Suomi shamanic traditions and those of Asia and the Americas,along with an increasing amount of archaeological evidence suggests that these cultures were in contact LONG before Columbus or Marco Polo!  
> "Lavvo"...Finnish tent, identical to a Great Plains Native tipi  
> "Seider"...necromancy and maledicta. Such practices were fairly well documented in both the sagas and in Classical Roman sources, and were condemned in both pre-Christian and Christian societies

Kyllikylli had always preferred sleeping in a lavvo to the thatched roofs and wooden walls favored by the Norse. You could hear what was going on outside, and if you did not like your neighbors you could pack up your tent and leave...or in a more dire situation, you could cut your way out and run. It was better to leave the whole "heroic death in battle" thing to people who believed in Valhalla, and Kylli knew that the Hereafter was much more complicated than that. Sometimes the dead did not lie quietly in their graves, and on cool, quiet nights in the waning half of the year they would come a-walking in the pale moon light and it bugged the shit out of her. "Torvig..." she said "and Astrid. What in Tuonla's name do you want? I told you Bjorn went back to Constantinople, and neither of you is stupid enough to blame him for your deaths. You did what you did, and you suffered the consequences, so fuck off and let me sleep!" She turned on her side and closed her eyes. "If you don't like cock, then don't fuck cock. That's an old Karelian proverb, and a good one."  
Astrid hissed. She had died a terrible death in childbed, and her gaunt shade could barely speak. "That monster took my baby..." she rasped "far, far away..."  
"Aino is well too," said Kyllikylli. "Ivar loves her with all his black and twisted little heart...and yes, I to was amazed to find that Ivar had a heart, but he's got more heart than you two whores, and yes 'whore' is a legitimate word to describe any person who uses sex to gain money or power. Feh...just go away and let me sleep!" She sat up suddenly, her eyes lit like two pale fireflies. "I can picture the welcome you two got when you arrived at the gates of Valhalla...especially you, Torvig! Did your husbands come to greet you...Jarl Borg and the little one with the big forehead whose name I can't remember, was it Erlander or Wallander? That must have been...heartwarming, like having your chest ripped open and hot coals shoved inside..." She chuckled nastily "If either of you even had a heart to begin with, that is!"  
"You're a nasty little bitch," said Torvig. "We were friends once, as I recall!"  
"That was before you hurt Bjorn," said Kylli. "And yes, I am a little bitch. Beware my fangs!" She held up two fingers like fangs. "But since I'm already awake, you might as well tell me what you want."   
"Help us, please!" Astrid husked, and then she mumbled something that sounded like "cider" or "see there". It took Kylli a moment to understand what she had just heard.  
"Perkale!" she said "Seider...are you talking about seider?"  
Astrid's shade nodded, then bowed her head. She had bled a lot when she had died, and her shade always appeared with blood dripping down her legs, and she seemed shamed and disgusted by it.  
"You're fucking with me, right?" Kylli asked. "Or do we really have a corpse-botherer among us?"  
Astrid nodded. "Dawn...soon. Go now. Help us....please!" She held out her hands. She had been an arrogant bitch in life, but she was pathetic in death.   
Kylli sighed. "I have to, I guess. Just give me a few days to prepare."


	2. Askori

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some unusual graffiti is found, and things get a bit strange.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Askori means "increase pain" in Norse.  
> Swastikas were a common motif in many cultures, and are still used in Hindu and Buddhist iconography. The CLOCKWISE swastika represents the protective powers of the Sun, whereas the COUNTER-CLOCKWISE swastika on the Nazi flag is actually an inversion of the original symbol. The simplest explanation for this is that the Nazis really did not understand the occult and "pagan" symbols and rituals that they tried to subvert to their own use, and fracked them up!

"Just what is that demented pixie doing?" Lucas asked Ubbe, who had been crowned King of Norway because nobody better suited to the job had come forward."She's been running around with a bee up her butt since before dawn." The tiny woman was dancing about with a swan's wing in one hand and a stone bowl in which something which let off a truly obnoxious smoke smoldered on top of a lit coal. "I think its like when those little boys swing the bowls on chains in one of your churches," Ubbe said."She's done it at the new Great Hall, and now she's come to do it to you."  
Lucas whistled through his broken teeth, but sat quietly as Kyllikylli wafted thick smoke at him, sprinkled him with water and drew a circle around his feet with the head of an axe,but balked suddenly when she cut her earlobe and tried to dab his face with her own blood. "I'm already washed in the blood of the Lamb, Miss. I don't hold with this. Please don't take offense....but did you mean to cut yourself like that?"  
"My Aiti always said that if you do blood magic you should always use your own. It needs less, and you don't have to take a life save in direst need. The Norse are wasteful, just to make a big show and impress their gods, which makes me wonder....if the Aesir were so powerful, then why feed them so much? Mine aren't all that impressed by a big show. It's the...intent...that counts." Kylli raised a hand to her ear, as though just realizing that she'd cut herself a bit deeper than she intended. Blood was streaming down her neck. "Perkale!" "It's the same for Christ," Lucas said. "He sacrificed himself so nobody else has to!"   
Kyllikylli sat down awkwardly. "I've been running about since before dawn, Lucas. Torvig and Astrid came to e. They told me there was a necromancer in Kattegat. Have you seen anything....peculiar?"  
"I woke up to find some sort of heathen gibberish scrawled on the door of St. Aethelstan's Church. Did you do that?  
Kylli stared at him. "I haven't even gotten to the church yet."  
"Well, someone carved it in the door, and they cut deep enough to ruin the finish. It's going to have to be planed out and the wood re-oiled, if it's going to look decent again."  
Kylli shrugged. "Can I look?"  
"Fine," said Lucas "but are you feeling all right?"  
"I'm a little warm," Kylli said. "I've been running about. You don't look too good, though."She took Lucas's pulse an felt his forehead. "You've got a fever, but let's look at the door." She followed him to St. Aethelstan's Church, where the fine oak door had been scratched with deep deliberate strokes that formed interlocking swastikas, and under this was carved a series of runes.  
"Ansur, Seig, Kaunaz...."  
"You don't have to read the to me," Kylli said. "Reading it aloud only gives it power. It means 'increase the pain'. These are odd...swastikas are generally used as protective symbols, but these are counter-sunwise, and meant to harm you."  
"Bull shit," said Lucas. "I don't believe in curses, because they only work if you believe in them."  
Kylli sighed. "I wouldn't put that theory to the test," she said, and flicked water at the missionary's head.  
"I know you mean well," Lucas said "but even if the idea that you talk to dead people wasn't utterly ridiculous, I for one would not trust anything that you heard from the two slags that Bjorn's mother used to keep him compliant while she usurped the throne of Norway from him and his brothers. I know you were friends with Torvig...did you and she....?" Lucas held up his forked fingers and interlocked them.   
"Um...no..." said Kylli. "I don't swing that way."  
"Did you know that the Bible doesn't actually forbid it?" asked Lucas. "Sodomy is of course forbidden irregardless of who you do with it, but scissoring and cunnilingus aren't mentioned at all. Bjorn asked me about that. He said Torvig and Astrid used to let him watch, and he wanted to know if it was sinful if Thorunn and Bellona were to...." He trailed off, blushing.  
Kylli sighed. "Why is it that even celibate men like yourself are obsessed with tribadism?"   
George shrugged, and wiped his face. "It's hot...." he said, and then suddenly slumped over.

"Well, what's wrong with him?" asked Ubbe. "Lucas is the last person you'd expect to get the vapours. He's built like a stone privy....in fact, he built the privy behind the church." The said privy was Kattegat's only public toilet built on the Roman model, and was built entirely from granite.   
"He's been ill-willed," said Kylli. "I'm worried that there's a necromancer in Kattegat...one who practices seider. The question is that now that Floki's dead, who could be capable of such things?"  
"Why Floki?" asked Ubbe.  
"You don't know what happened to Earl Haraldson's boys, who were decapitated and....placed in a rather suggestive position? Necromancers do weird things to corpses, and Floki was a prime suspect at the time though nothing was proven. There was a rumour that he'd done peculiar things to Aethelstan's corpse as well, though Floki denied doing so."  
"Isn't necromancy what you do, Kylli?" Ubbe asked "Talking to dead people and such?"  
Kylli shook her head. "I only talk to dead people, I don't force them to to anything they don't want to do, and I don't mess with corpses. I protect them from such things, because necromancy is worse than slavery....and yes, I say this as a member of a race that you Norse common to sell to the Russians."  
Meggie nodded. "I love you, Ubbe, and you've always been kind to me, but not all of my previous masters and mistresses have been so kind. If people can do to that to the living, I hate to think what they can do to the dead." She clasped her hands over her belly. "I've seen such magic before, Ubbe. They can make me miscarry, and never be able to have a baby. They can make you impotent. They can..."  
"Obviously, they can drag Lucas to Tuonla, even though he does not believe in such things," said Kyllikylli.  
"Tuonella?" Ubbe asked. It was a difficult word to pronounce, with an initial consonant that sounded halfway between T and D.  
"Neh!" Kylli said. "Tu-on-leh, with the tongue pressed firmly against the roof of the mouth, and the accent on the final syllable. It's the realm of Tuoni, the Crimson King. It's also called The Dead Place, Hall of the Crimson King, Red Lodge, Terminus, and Your Final Destination. In other words, it's Hell....though not quite what you think Hell is like."  
"I'm not sure what you mean," said Ubbe. "Hell is hell. It's dark and cold and you don't come back until Ragnarok."  
Kylli shook her head. "It would be so for you, if that is what you believe. For me it's a little bit more complicated. Each of us has our own Tuonla that we create for ourselves, or our own Jumala, if we so choose. Thing is, I don't know what Lucas's personal Hell is until I go there.  
Ubbe stared at her. "Yes, I can do that!" Kylli snapped.


	3. Swan of Tuonla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things go to Hell (or rather Tuonla)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hotboxing (as described here) was described by Tacitus as a practice popular with the Thracians and other Eastern European nomadic tribes. I really only recommend the use of cannabis for medicinal use!  
> Tuonla (the Finnish underworld) is more like the Tibetan Bardo than the Norse Hell, or the Judeo-Christian Sheol...a place of purification in preparation for the next life rather than of eternal torment. It is possible to travel there in dreams or in shamanic trance as well as in death, but it is extremely easy to become trapped there...and I added some Classical Greek stuff just for fun.  
> The conversation with the Swan exhibits my knowledge of modern conversational Finnish...the language that Professor Tolkien used as the basis for Elvish.

That evening, Kylli let her brothers throw a handful of ganja buds on the sauna rocks. She did not feel she needed it herself, and it tended to stink up the place for days afterwards, but her brothers enjoyed getting baked in the sauna and so did Pangur Ban. She herself had work to do, and so she headed up past Sigi's Bridge to a rather pretty valley where the stream that eventually flowed under the bridge and into the fjord lept down from a tall limestone crag. Bjorn had showed her a place that he used to go as a child, and he continued to visit the waterfall even though he was now too big to fit into the narrow crevice behind the waterfall that led to the cave where he and his sister used to hide when his parents were fighting. He had not know what the paintings of horses and bison and strange extinct beasts near the back of the cave signified, or the ochre hand prints on the walls. There were folk here long before the Norse, and spirit beings much older than theirs. Kylli unrolled her reindeer pelt, sat down and blew out her lamp, because the sort of work she did needed to be done in the dark. She then began to yoik, and from her lips there flew a swarm of golden bees. She desperately wished to fly out of the cave past the golden moon to Otava, the star that the sky pivoted on and which was her true home, but she turned from bright Jumala. "To Tuonla I go, to the Dead Place I go for wisdom. Words shall not be hid, though their makers perish..." One bee found the way and the rest followed, and eventually the darkness turned to pale mist, and Kylli was in human form again, standing by a broad river over which there was a wooden bridge. She could just make out a dark, wooded shoreline on the other side. "Not so bad...." she said to herself. "No sign of a supernatural mutt with three heads, and the river under me isn't flowing with blood. The boards beneath her boots creaked. "Bridge needs work," she thought as a gigantic head on a serpentine neck loomed out of the mist. "Of course, there HAD to be a dragon of some kind..." she thought, just as she realized that the beast's scales were in fact feathers. "Not a dragon, a swan!" She stopped dead in her tracks. Swans were beautiful, but even normal-sized swans were not to be messed with, and this one was HUGE! "Yo, joutsen Tuonen!" she called out.  
The Swan hissed like the wind blowing through a sedge-marsh "Oletto taala liiikematkalla?"  
"Yo! Nimeni on Kyllikylli Taapiolan! Missa on Tuoni?" Kylli yelled back.  
"Kunika kauan aiotte viipa talla?"  
Kylli paused. There really was no time in Tuonla, so the Swan was only trying to stall her.  
The Swan winked. "Onko teilla?" From somewhere in its feathers it produced a bong that was nearly as tall as Kylli.  
"Ei kiitos," said Kylli. "Minulla ei ole aika siihen. Anteeksi." It was strange to find that the dread guardian of the Dead Place was a gigantic feathered pothead, but stranger things can and did happen to her. "Nakemiin!"  
"Hyva matkaa!"   
As Kylli walked past the toking Swan, she remembered a proverb that Lady Lou had taught her. "Easy is the way to Tuonla," she had said. "but hard the escape..."


	4. Heartbreak Hotel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Netherworld turns out to be even stranger than Kylli thought

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Electricity was discovered by Archimedes before the time of Christ, and later medieval alchemists observed the luminous properties of "etheric vapours", but the two were only combined to create neon signs in the late 19th Century, so such a thing would have been considered "magic!"   
> The verse on the bell is borrowed from the writing of Professor Tolkien's friend, Clive Staples Lewis, but most of this chapter is from a dream I had which reminded me of The Shining.  
> Sigurd's "snake" is properly called a coloboma, and would have caused him vision problems and considerable pain.

The Hall of the Crimson King was not quite what Kyllikylli Taapiolan expected it to be. There were no screams of anguish, no grisly hall thatched with adders , no skulls on pikes or freezing winds whistling through chinks in the wattled walls . Nor was it stifling hot and shrouded in darkness, and there was no sign of the rivers Styx, Pelagtheon, Achereon or Lethe. There was just a large red-brick building of vaguely Roman construction, surrounded by trees. The only thing that looked strange or otherworldly was the sign above the door which read Heartbreak Hotel in letters that glowed like molten glass, and Vacancy in letters that glowed a sickly blue like that of corpse candles in a marsh at night. Kylli was intrigued by how the strange glowing letters might work, because her great-aunt Louhi had demonstrated how certain alchemical gases glowed when subjected to the Touch Me Not (which the Moon Thief said the Greeks had given the name "electrkos") and this seemed very similar, but she had no idea how such a strong, steady current could have been passed through the gas-filled tubes that made up the letters. Kyllikylli imagined a vast amber roller spinning constantly over a second roller covered in sheepskin, powered perhaps by a windmill or a donkey on a treadmill, but the idea of going to such effort to produce little more light than what was put out by a tallow candle seemed ridiculous. "Curiouser and curiouser," she said, and entered what seemed to be the main hall. Here there was indeed fire, in four vast fireplaces flanked by Doric columns, which like the soaring double staircase that led to the upper floors and the pillars and balustrades that lined the upper balconies were hewn from costly red marble that looked like fresh prime beef. Great candelabras of crimson glass glowed sullenly in the upper reaches of the hall, but most of the light came from the four vast fireplaces, and illuminated a vast expanse of plush but extremely ugly carpet dotted with overstuffed leather arm chairs and brass-and-marble end tables. The only person she could see was a small boy in a blue sweater who was playing with strange-looking metal toys on wheels. He looked at Kylli wordlessly for a moment, peering with eyes that reminded Kylli of the creepy, gimpy youngest son of Ragnar, Ivar the Boneless, then pointed wordlessly at a large desk at the other end of the hall. Like much of the rest of the furnishings, it was made of that red marble that looked like raw meat. On it sat a brass bell with Latin script running around its base, but the words were English rather than Latin. Kylli (whose mother tongue was of the Ugric family rather than Germanic or Latin) had to puzzle over it a bit before she deciphered the inscription as:  
"Make your choice, adventurous Stranger/Strike the bell and bide the danger/Or wonder til it drives you mad/What would have happened if you had!"  
"Feh!" thought Kylli. "Now that's a nasty bit of magic. Now I've read it I've either got to strike the bell or go completely insane wondering what would have happened if I had rung it. They couldn't have just put "please ring for service" on it, could they?" She tried to turn away, then turned back. "Oh what the hell, ring the damn bell!" The bell rang once. It was soft and pleasant at first, but it reverberated and seemed to grow louder and louder until the red glass chandeliers rattled and chimed and shed dust on the hideous carpet. It grew so painfully loud that Kyllikylli wanted to cover her ears and flee, but then it suddenly fell silent again. Sigurd, known as Snake-in-the-Eye stood at Kylli's elbow. He was resplendent in a livery of red velvet trimmed with gold braid that seemed sprung from the most fevered dream of a truly sadistic military fetishist,and although his smile was broad and welcoming, Sigurd's eyes (both the normal one and the one with the coloboma) bespoke a wilderness of pain.  
"Good evening, Ms. Taapiolan," he said. "Tonight you dine in Hell. Have you a reservation?"   
"I'm not staying," Kylli answered. 'I seek Tuoni. There has been a disturbance in the Land of the Living. A living person may be practicing seider, against the authority of King Tuoni and the law of the Dead Place. Where is Tuoni, that I may have words with him?"  
Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye said nothing, his face fixed in a grinning mask, but a slight twitch in his good eye prompted Kylli to turn. The little boy had set down his toys, and stood up. Somehow the ugly carpet (which Kylli now realized was based on a pattern of interlocking counter-clockwise swastikas) had reversed its pattern so that the swastikas turned clockwise, but it was still a truly hideous carpet. The little blond boy stood with his hand outstretched, and a ghastly, creaking, rasping voice that was not the voice of any child said "I am Tuoni. I live in this boy's finger. What boon do you wish of me?"  
"I seek..." Kylli started, but the horrible voice interrupted her rather rudely.  
"Do you want a red room?" Tuoni asked.  
"No...I...I'm looking for someone..."  
"Maybe you'll find them in one of the rooms. Do you want a Red Room?" The sweet, childish face was grinning nastily.  
"Um," said Kylli "What are my options?"   
Sigurd's grin slipped. "He's not really giving you a choice. All the rooms are red. Just say yes or you'll be here for all eternity."  
"Then," said Kylli "I most definitely want a red room." Then on impulse, she added "A red room, a womb room, a tomb room..."  
The little boy whose finger housed Tuoni, dread Crimson King of the Undiscovered Country nodded. "A red womb tomb room. You're a wise lady who knows what she wants. Take the key and let Sigurd show you to your room."


	5. Through The Glass Darkly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn that both Sigurd and Kylli despise each other, and there's one little thing about Kylli that she reveals to no one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's numerous references (not just in the Sagas but in Classical Roman and Greek sources and various Asian and Native American traditions) to certain forms of magic being the province of barren women and "men who are not men", who are generally believed to have been eunuchs or transvestites...but Kylli is a rare case of a person born with ambiguous genitals, so s/he would probably have a fair bit of sympathy for someone who has a similar problem, as Ivar does in my fan fiction.  
> Modern silver-glass mirrors were not invented until the 18th Century, so a large and perfect mirror would also seem magical to a person from the 8th Century AD!  
> "Nuhulla"--insane.  
> Pelagtheon....one of the five rivers of Hades (the others are Styx, Acheron, Lethe and Nepenthe) crossed by the shades of the dead on their path to rebirth. Later Christian writers gave the name to a lake of boiling blood where the wrathful were tormented until Judgement Day  
> Vainemoinen....Finnish culture hero who I imagine as a cross between Gandalf and Keith Richards

The corridors were incredibly long and dimly lit, and there were many doors. The door Kyllikylli was led to was not opposite another door, but a large mirror. Kylli had seen small hand mirrors in Constantinople, but never one large enough to see her entire self in. She looked at her reflection...a small woman in her mid-twenties with large silver eyes dressed in white reindeer-skin boots, a linen smock and necklaces of amber, wood,bone, horn, shell, and a strand of pearls from the China Sea that Bjorn had given her that was worth as much as a long ship. She wore a double-peaked cap to hide the fact that her beautiful fluffy tail of hair had been brutally shaved off the last time she had channelled the shade of Bjorn's father and had not yet grown back. She looked in the mirror and wondered if she really looked like her reflection in the mirror in real life when Sigurd Snake-In-The-Eye suddenly grabbed her and shoved her against the wall. One hand grabbed at Kylli's chest, while the other crept up her skirt, and Sigurd chomped down on the back of her neck like a tom cat. It was the sort of trick assholes of both sexes had tried on her because they really did not know better, but after a minute or two of fumbling, Sigurd stopped.  
"What the fuck, Kylli...." he asked "You're not a lady!"  
"And you, Sigurd, are no gentleman, so I could ask you the same question!" said Kyllikylli. "No, I'm not entirely a lady. I'm not quite a man, either. The technical term is 'hermaphroditism.' I dress like a lady because I like wearing dresses and jewellery and never got the hang of peeing while standing up. And what the fuck should you care...you swing both ways." She snaked around, and glowered at Sigurd. "Ivar told me. He also showed me the bruises you gave him. You got off on beating your own brother, didn't you?"  
Sigurd's face flushed, but he said nothing.  
"That's not just sodomy, that's incest!" added Kylli. "And then there's what you did to that poor girl that Ubbe later married.  
"Why are you mad at me?" Sigurd whined. "Ivar's the one who tried to throttle her!"  
"After you set them up...you should have known better!" snapped Kylli "You also gave her crab lice. Nobody hated you because you liked men as well as women, Sigurd...they hated you because you were an asshole. Yo, you heard me....you're a whiny, self-absorbed, arrogant pretty boy who thought his shit didn't stink, and a shitty oud player to boot! Quite frankly,I don't blame Ivar for throwing an axe at you!"  
"You should talk about thinking your shit don't stink," Sigurd responded. "You're pretty, and you do magic and even I'll admit that you're better on your kantele than I am on my oud, but you strut around Kattegat like you own the place. You're as the big-haired bitch that birthed Bjorn or my own drunk slut of a Mum. You women are all the same, because you whore yourself for power." Sigurd leered. "By the way, what's Bjorn like in the sack? I've heard he's into weird shit involving girls with strap-ons, but neither Torvig nor Astrid would ever tell me if it was true."  
Kylli punched Sigurd in the balls. "I have never slept with your half-brother," she snarled as Sigurd doubled over in pain. "I tried to climb him like a tree once, and he picked me up and tossed me in the fjord. Bjorn was and is my FRIEND. You really are an asshole, Sigurd...and you have no sisu at all!" She looked at the door, and saw that it was not the same as the others, for it had runes etched into it that read IROKSA. This was gibberish, but when Kylli looked in the mirror again, she grinned. The walls were painted with counter-clockwise swastikas similar to those on the carpet in the lobby, but in the mirror the baneful symbols were reversed. "I don't think I need the key, Sigurd," she said. "Use it yourself if you're brave enough to face what's on the other side of this door." She pressed the key into Sigurd's palm "Or stay here. You're a cock-eyed son of a bitch, but even you should be allowed another spin of the Wheel." Then she took a running jump, bounced off one of the door-posts and dove head-first into the mirror.

All was red, and Kyllikylli felt like she was falling for a very long time. The words "Red...dead...red...dead...red...dead...." thundered in her brain, then slowed and changed to "Womb...room....tomb...womb...room...tomb..." then "red...room...red...room..." and then became her heart beat, and she found herself in a chamber that was red. Indeed, the irregular walls seemed made from flesh and were slick with what looked like menstrual blood. A man lay naked, face-down on the floor, sobbing and mumbling in Gaelic.  
"Well, I found Lucas, and he's totally nuhulla. Here are the waters of the Pelagtheon...." She crouched down and stroked a muscular back that was webbed with scars. Her great-aunt had explained to her that the reason why Catholics flagellated themselves was because it induced an altered state of consciousness, and like all such methods it could be over used. "You don't belong here, Lucas..." she said. "None of this was made by you."  
Lucas raised his head. His eyes were dark wells of utter horror, and Kylli saw that he was in fact held down by a woman's limbs, and Astrid's gaunt face peered up at her from the floor. Astrid's body was fused with the fleshy red surface on which Lucas lay, and was twined around his in grotesque coitus. The touch of men had been loathsome to Astrid in life, and the touch of her bony flesh apparently repulsed Lucas, but they were perpetually intertwined in a thrusting, pumping mass with each other and the bleeding, heaving floor of the Red Room. The grating voice of Tuoni issued from Astrid's lips.  
"Vainemoinen came to Tuonla for words of wisdom, and Orpheus descended to Hades for the love of Eurydice. What do you seek, Kyllikylli Taapiolan, small of stature and of little worth?"  
"Him," Kylli said, nudging Lucas's shoulder. Her white boots were stained with blood. "He was brought here against his will. I will pay the customary price of a song. In her hands appeared a kantele that was made from the bones of a fish like the famed kantele of Vainemoinen, Master of Song, He Who Was Born Old. "If that is still the going rate for saving a soul from Tuonla."  
The grim face smiled. "That is the going rate. One song, and if it pleases me I set this man free. Not the tribad, though. She pleases me." Bony hands rubbed pancake breasts and a concave stomach. "Some day people will think bony androgenes are the height of feminine beauty, and women will starve themselves half to death to look like this."  
"And I though flagellation was weird and unhealthy," Kylli thought as she began to play. A song came to her lips from another century. It had a strange, thumping, humping beat like no song Kylli had ever sung before. "Oh, since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell. For down at the end of Lonely Street there's Heartbreak Hotel/ I feel so lonely baby, I feel so lonely...I feel so lonely I could die..." It was a strange song about loneliness and despair and whiling away the hours. It was a song about eros, and all the pain it brings. At the end, Lucas spasmed as though he were climaxing, but it seemed to bring him terrible pain rather than pleasure. The bony arms and legs released him, and surprisingly, he leaned in and kissed Astrid's sunken cheek.   
"I'm sorry," he said. "I know you hate cock, so I assume it was as bad for you as it was for me."  
"Get up," said Tuoni. "Follow the Karelian hermaphrodite, and don't look back."  
Lucas grabbed Kylli's arm. A passage had opened up, and they ran towards the light. "Wheresoever thou goest, there go I" he said  
"Whatever, Lucas!" Kylli said. "Mind you don't slip. They ran through the mist now, across a wooden bridge. Something tall and snake-like loomed through the mist, hissing like a tea kettle. "Perkale....it looks like Big Bird's got the munchies," Kylli said. "It happens to me when I smoke ganja too! Run, Lucas...run!"


	6. The Bee Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylli returns to the Land of the Living and makes a bee line back to Kattegat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A "curse pole" involved erecting a severed horse's head on a pole, and may be where they got the idea for the infamous scene from The Godfather

Kylli opened her eyes to total darkness and the sound of rushing water, and knew where she was. Her spirit-bees had returned to her body, and were back in their hive next to her heart. She knew this because she could feel them buzzing around in an agitated manner, and as soon as she re-lit her oil lamp and rolled up her reindeer skin she legged it back to Kattegat, to the room where her brothers Hanno and Jussi were keeping watch over Lucas. She staggered wordlessly past them, bent over and pried open the Caledonian missionary's mouth, vomiting golden bees down his throat.  
Ubbe winced. "That looks uncomfortable," he said.  
"It could be worse," said Hanno. "Some times the bees fly out of Kylli's butt instead of her mouth."  
Pangor Ban yawned, stretched, and batted away a stray bee that had settled on his nose, and Lucas woke with a startled grunt. He sat up and started vomiting bees.  
"I feel like absolute shit!" he said "and I need a drink. My mouth feels furry."  
Hanno handed him a skin of mead. "You've been out of it for three days and are probably dehydrated," Hanno said "but take it easy or you'll puke it back up again."  
Lucas slowed down a bit, but finished half the skin before the bees had found their way back to their hive, including one that decided to take an unconventional route and scrambled up under Kylli's skirt. Lucas nudged her and winked "Whassamatter, Honey? Ya got a bee up yer butt?"  
Kylli smiled down at him a little too sweetly. "Be careful, I have a sting in my tail."  
Lucas grinned, and guzzled mead. "I'm sure you do, Sweetie. So does this mead....hey, did you have anything to do with...?"  
Kylli nodded. "Just chalk it up to a weird dream you had because you were in bed with a fever for three days, if you want."  
"My sheets are soaked," said Lucas. "It must have been a terrible fever."  
Kylli nodded.  
"Astrid is still in....that place. That ungodly place, with the hideous..." He vomited on the floor.  
"I'll clean that," said Hanno. "I told you not to drink so quickly." He went to get a mop and bucket.  
"All and all, even a miserable gangrel creature like Astrid did not deserve....that." Lucas started retching again. "What happened to her in life should have been torment enough."   
"We all chose our own Tuonla," said Kylli "or our own Jumala. And don't forget that Sigurd's in Tuonla too, and I gave him a key to get out. I hope he mans up and does the right thing even if he was a selfish pig when he was alive."  
"I'm not sure what you mean," said Ubbe. "Dead is dead, ain't it?"  
"The big question is who's meddling in shadows on this side?" asked Kylli  
"Well," said Margrethe "there were a couple more cases of suspicious vandalism, and then this morning I got up to air out the room. Ubbe's been eating a lot of saurkraut lately...it's even worse than when he eats beans!"  
Ubbe looked as though he was about to say something, but was silenced by the sound of his own flatulence. After the air cleared, he said "We saw Uma erecting a curse-pole outside our bedroom window, and put her in the hoosegow. Then I sent the bailiffs over to Uma's place with a search warrant. He found...strange things. The old lady had stuffed her daughter with sawdust, dressed her in a frilly dress and put her in a rocking chair by the fire, and that was not the strangest thing that they found. Some people...deal with grief in strange ways. Anyway, Uma confessed immediately without being coerced. She's awaiting trial, but she got sick very suddenly and might not live long enough to stand trial. She's a frail old woman, and there's nothing left for her in this world."  
"If she lives, go easy on her," said Kylli "because with the choices she's made in this world she will probably not be judged kindly in the next one!"

A week before Yul, Margrethe went into labour, assisted by the buxom granny who had tried to hug Ubbe to death last Midsummer who was a competent midwife when she was not tripping balls. Margrethe was young and healthy, and the first infant slid out comparatively easily and seemed healthy, if rather put out by her sudden eviction from the womb. "Red room...womb room...tomb room..." Kylli muttered, looking at the small, red-faced fetus covered in languno. Then she saw the hand gripping the first fetus's ankle, and there were alarms and excursions as a second fetus slithered out covered in guck and uttered a howl of what sounded like triumph at first but changed in pitch to something akin to frustration and disappointment as she was being washed off and inspected by the midwife. "Healthy girls, the pair of them...except that this one has a coloboma, like her uncle Sigurd," said the midwife.  
"At least we assume he was only her uncle," said Kylli, and she gave Ubbe a nudge. "Shit like this happens...at least it's not another Ivar! Any suggestions for names?"  
"NOT BRUNHILDE OR ASSLAUG!" Margrethe shouted suddenly. "I know they're family names, but they're just...awful. What was your mother's name, Kylli?'  
"My mother's name was Metasola," said Kyllikylli."  
"Oh Frig," said Margrethe. "That's worse than Brunhilde! Maybe I'll give them Christian names. What saint's day is this?"   
"I believe it is the feast of Saint Hilarius and Saint Felix," said Lucas.   
"NO!" shouted Ubbe "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO NAME EITHER OF MY DAUGHTERS FELICITY OR HILARY!"


End file.
